1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to a graphical user interface, and, in particular, to a system, method, and computer program product to implement a graphical user interface capable of easily creating items in software such as a drawing tool, a CAD program, a word processor, a spreadsheet program, and the like which use a pointing device such as a mouse, and the like.
2. Description of Related Art
Usual plotting software such as a drawing tool, a CAD program, and the like, is generally provided with two windows called a palette and a canvas. FIG. 13 shows an example of a display screen of a conventional plotting software application. In FIG. 13, reference numeral 1000 designates a display screen, reference numeral 1001 designates a canvas, and reference numeral 1002 designates a palette including items 1002a such as a line, a rectangle, a circle, a star shape, a text, and the like. Also, reference numeral 1003 designates a mouse pointer.
As shown in FIG. 14, in the graphical user interface of conventional plotting software, when a user wants to draw a line, a rectangle, a circle, or the like, the user first chooses one of the items 1002a to be created now from the palette, and starts a mode for creating that item 1002a. Then, the mouse pointer 1003 is moved to the canvas 1001, which is the actual workplace, and dragging is carried out to decide the size of the item, and create it. In the example shown in FIG. 14, a rectangular item is selected. Thus, conventional plotting or graphics software applications require a number of operations to perform the potentially repetitive task of creating a graphical element such as the illustrated rectangle. Any such additional, unnecessary operations elongate the quantity of time required to achieve a desired result (e.g., the creation of an image, illustration, diagram or the like) and over time may cause repetitive stress-related injuries.